


Chop and Change

by boxparade



Series: White Blank Page [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gender Issues, Grief/Mourning, Kid Fic, Off-screen Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re sure you want to do this?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chop and Change

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this is part of a larger AU in which Lisa passes away, Dean and Brandy need a fresh start while they deal with their grief, Brandy is actually Ben, Dean has absolutely no idea how to handle that but he tries his best, and then Dean meets Cas, who slowly but steadily falls for both Dean and his son.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Dean asks for what must be the thousandth time.

Brandy just nods determinedly. She has a smile fixed on her face, and has since Dean suggested they take her to get her hair cut today. This probably wouldn’t bother Dean so much if it weren’t laced with latent meaning. Lots of girls have short hair, even the young ones, and the only reason Brandy hasn’t shorn all her hair off before today is because Lisa kept it long.

Dean’s starting to realize that a lot of things Lisa did were actions meant to keep Brandy looking and acting feminine. He’s not sure how he feels about that kind of subterfuge, considering that had Lisa been alive when he’d noticed, he’d probably be tearing her head off about it.

“Let’s go~o,” Brandy whines, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet, glancing at the door. Dean fights back the urge to take it all back and grabs the keys. Brandy bolts through the door and is buckled in to the impala before Dean’s even finished locking the front door.

They go to Supercuts because it’s cheap and Dean figures giving a short cut shouldn’t be too difficult. Money’s not exactly tight, since Lisa had life insurance and a relatively healthy inheritance, even with Dean taking so much time off from the garage. But he’s been thinking about moving, can’t stand the sprawling house with its half-empty bed and small reminders of what he’s lost, like slips of paper with notes written in her handwriting, or the stain on the front window where she once hung one of Brandy’s school projects before it got ruined when they left the window open during a rainstorm, the marker colors bleeding and soaking into the window, coloring it like stained-glass.

He thinks at this point, all of Indiana reminds him of Lisa, and he needs a fresh start. He needs to stop living under the suffocating blanket of his grief and get the fuck out before it swallows him.

The woman behind the counter greets Brandy with a “Hello, sweetheart,” and then gazes up at Dean and asks what she can do for them today.

“Just a haircut,” Dean says, swallowing, and the woman nods, purple-red hair bobbing with her head, held in place with god knows what kind of crazy hair stuff that all women seem to have bottles and bottles of. She clacks on the computer for a bit, asks Dean for his phone number and zip code, and then charges him five dollars and disappears into the back. She doesn’t return, but instead a younger woman with bleach-blonde hair comes out in her place, smiling sweetly down at Brandy before moving her eyes up to Dean. She does the double-take, her eyes sweeping back down and then up to meet his eyes before she blinks a few times and smiles coyly.

Dean recognizes this for what it is, and he smiles in return. It’s a smile that tries to convey both _You’re very pretty_ and _If I weren’t still grieving for my wife and probably moving across the country and currently freaking out because my daughter is getting all her hair cut off, I would probably go for it._

She seems a bit taken aback at his undoubtedly terrifying series of expressions, but she recovers quickly and asks if he’s got anything in mind for his daughter.

Dean just presses his lips together tightly and shakes his head, leaving Brandy to make her own choices, and he retreats to the front where there are a few chairs set up around a coffee table stacked with magazines.

It’s only been five minutes before the hairdresser comes back out to the front, approaching Dean, and drags him behind the curtain to where Brandy is sitting in a chair in front of a mirror, cape draped over her, spinning around in the chair and looking bored. The hairdresser stands behind Brandy and purses her lips, looking at Dean speculatively. When she speaks, it’s with that almost-whispering voice that makes adults feel like children can’t hear them even when they can.

“She wants to cut off all her gorgeous hair,” the hairdresser finally says. Dean is, surprisingly, not that shocked at hearing it laid out so simply. He nods.

The hairdresser—Mandy, the name tag says—purses her lips even more and frowns in confusion. “You’re okay with that?”

Dean resists the urge to sigh, throw up his hands, and yell “I don’t know!” Instead, he meets Brandy’s eyes in the mirror, and for just a moment, catches a flash of fear, that maybe she’s doing something wrong by wanting to cut her hair, by wanting to be who she is, that maybe this was all just a farce and Dean’s promises mean nothing and they’ll go home and things will be exactly the same with both of them grieving and stuck and miserable, and it hurts.

Dean turns back to Mandy and nods decidedly. “Cut it however she wants it,” he says.

Mandy pauses again, scanning his face, and then seems to come to some sort of decision. She nods and offers him a sympathetic smile. “Alright, dear,” he turns back to Brandy, reaching for her scissors. Dean nods at Brandy in the mirror before he turns to go back to waiting, but not before he hears Mandy say something about letting kids make their own mistakes.

The stupid thing is, a part of him hopes this is nothing more than his seven-year-old daughter making a silly, meaningless, one-time mistake.


End file.
